Wedding Day

Today is Sonny Boy's wedding day!

I am busy sewing Daisy's flower dog outfit.  Meanwhile, she has plans other than wearing a white satin and lace flower gown.

As in pooping on the sleeping rug then tracking it all over the carpets.  She will need a bath before she gets gowned, the carpet will need cleaning, and I will need to move like a locomotive to get this done before 5 PM.  The DownEaster will have to provide the inspiration.

MOVE!

Seeking Peace

The turkeys have been chased from their usual spot in the tree nursery by heavy machines running their engines all day long.   A sneaky walk in the back revealed the recent thinning of evergreen trees planted 5 years ago in an area closest to our property line.  The engines sounded like a train in the back yard.  Some evenings after the machinery shuts down, we hear automatic weapons fired in the same general vicinity.

No wonder the turkeys have moved to a more peaceful field. Here, across the road from Lake Doll, they are secure enough to begin Spring displays of affection.

Dirty With Money

Every year the fishbowl fills up with coins from pockets, purses, couches, coin returns in the laundromats, concrete floors of parking lots.  It is with great pleasure that I guess how much is there, then count and roll the coins.  I become like Dire Straits' Wild West End ...conductress on the number nineteen/ She was a honey/ Pink toenails and hands all dirty with money.

This year there's enough to buy a new coffee maker since the old one now requires descaling every week, and groans with every request for a cuppa.  I'm off to the bank, pleased at my good fortune, ready to shake dirty hands with the teller.

Rare Air

Just looking up a website for the Colorado peaks over 14,000 feet gave me palpitations.  But that's what I am studying for the July trip.  One site suggests the order of difficulty from "easiest" to most difficult.  There is just one 14er on my completed list of peak bagging, Uncompahgre Peak, 14,309 feet, listed as moderate.  And it wasn't too bad of a climb, although it was two years ago.

My hair turns a little grayer after each trip to such altitudes.  By the time Everest Base Camp comes around, I should see Grandma's silver hair in a braid when I look into reflecting pools in Nepal.

Heavy on the Weird

In honor of my sign-loving brother, a sign...

I wonder what the child thought when this sign appeared last month on the road to the Critter Barn.  Similar to Caution, Deaf Child, or Look Out, Handicapped Child.  Would the autistic child approve of being singled out?  And would a cautious driver continue at 40 mph here?  And what would happen if someone spray painted the sign to make it an Artistic Child?

I prefer the corner of Love Brook.  Although this road is muddy and bumpy, the other is too cautionary.  Weirdly interesting, but heavy on the weird.

Cruising Altitude

Chicago from 35,000 feet

We had an old version of a flight simulator and often chose to take off and land at Meigs Field, the old Chicago airport that was Daley-fied (bulldozed) in the middle of the night. Jim would most often crash into the Sears Tower instead of landing. We didn't have a joystick. The airplane was controlled by Page Up and Page Down buttons. It was very challenging, and something that we never mastered.

But the point is that I always confirmed Chicago from the air by seeing the black Sears Tower and its two antennae, not by the position of the city by the lake, or the Lakeshore Drive, or the old Meigs airport.

It was nice being so far above the city hustle. Today I think I'll stay at this altitude; removed, quiet, observant.

Trust

Begin building a team of advisers.

I've just spent two hours thinking and writing about advisers and trust, when all I really want to do is sit alone in a dark room and eat cake.  It's raining, I've lost a friend, my dog is old, there's no cake, and I don't think anyone, trusted or not, can make it different.

The trusted adviser is skillful, not just opinionated.  The adviser can be trusted to provide the "right" advice over time.  The trust flows both ways.  The trusted adviser may not be able to provide trusted advice on a multitude of topics.  The trusted adviser advises fetching an umbrella, walking with the old dog in the rain, driving to the grocery store for cake, and making a new friend who plays the guitar.  The trusted adviser says watch for the sunrise, listen to music, take more pictures.

Bush Pilot

Too much flying, movement, altitude, time change.  Excess Vata requires a pacifier.  So what do I do?  Go flying in the little airplane, pack up again, and go flying to high altitude in a jet.

The ice is melting all over our area.

The seaplane base is still frozen in with all the floats sitting on the banks waiting for open water.

The Androscoggin River runs muddy and full.  Where the creeks empty into it, the clear mark of stream to river is obvious.  We landed in Turner, Maine on the grass left of runway 30 at 3B5.

The first landing was the sweetest.  Then Jim started bouncing the big tires like a bush pilot.

Ice Out

The ice is melting 3 weeks ahead of the average schedule.

We arrived at the lake in the late afternoon and by the next morning, the ice edge a few feet from the dock.  My ski tracks from January glide off into the water's edge.

We sat for an hour watching ice-out from the naturally air conditioned swing.

In the 80 degree day, we kept cool sitting in snow.  Glacier Bay sometimes holds onto its snow until June.  Not this year.

Spring

Sometimes I lose the beauty of the clouds and the wind when all I think about is the weight of the pack, the chafing of the shoulder straps, the cinched bruising of the hip belt on the bones underneath.  Today is Spring.  Right now, Spring as a metaphor, just does not lift this winter sorrow off my back.  So today I am  walking outside without carrying anything but my attention to the lightness of walking.  That might be beautiful.

The Sun Came Up

"Out of a shattered open heart springs a fountain of fiery sacred passion that will never run dry." - Rumi

"In the realm of spirit, things are just heating up." - Marianne Williamson

Shanti

Early morning at the ashram before breakfast.  No logging trucks are allowed in here and the pines that border the hilltop are immense old souls.

Phones are limited in use to the road between the residential building and the sacred fire pit where there is cell reception marked by one bar on the phone.

The dogwood trees are about one week closer to blooming than those at home.  On one side of the hill a newly dug trench extends as far as the eye can see. Rumor has it that a new septic system is being installed.

I looked the other way, where the mist in the valleys hugged the cooler air and watered the orchards.  I am heading home today, through the traffic corridors of Connecticut and the car wars of the Mass Pike, thinking about stillness.

Irish Eyes

The willows along the interstate are turning a new-growth lime green, my bed spread is willow-green, and I refuse to be pinched today.  Do not wake me from this green dream.  I am in a Pennsylvanian seminar about the 64 yoginis, where 63 of them reside in the happening place of the event horizon and one yogini is the gravitational singularity, the black hole, a place of infinite density and zero volume.  I wonder if the 63 yoginis are wearing green today.  The one dense yogini is without color, unobserved, timeless, ready to exhale a green world into being.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Counting Chickens

Remnants of snow lie in patches beneath the northern edges of trees and bushes.  Maybe when I return on Sunday from Pennsylvania, I'll pick up the cans in the ditches.  Mother Nature would like that.

The disappearing snow revealed nearly eighty cans and bottles in the weeds and near culverts along the mile of road that I walked yesterday.  That amount measured in gas would get me down the road but barely into Massachusetts.  Two states down, four more to go using money spent before it's earned.

Talisman for the Ides

A woman in Denver told me that my new bag looks like it came from Boulder.  Well, she actually said, "That's very Boulderesque."

This new bag is not as big as the old red frayed and torn carry-all, so I won't be able to haul as many books, snacks, boulders, necessary items.  That's a good thing!  It came from Turtle Moon in Scottsbluff, Nebraska.  Sorry, not another one like its talisman kind.

Drink More Water

Last Week's Four Food Groups:

Vodka

Potato Chips

Ice Cream Bars

M&Ms Peanuts

Ordinarily this would be the time to get back on track, review the objectives, take a break from travel.  However, this month is anything but an ordinary time.  The 64 Yoginis beckon in Pennsylvania.  Sonny Boy is getting married in Idaho.  How will we ever manage to get our plates in shape?

It's Loud in Denver

Sunrise, 

heading south, then east.

More crowded than usual, no outlets to use the computer at DIA, so a quick note, then over and out.

Breaking the surly bonds of earth.

The Next Meal

If only the day could be as neatly ordered as these bricks, with everything falling into place.  But no, I get out of the car and see I am dressed all in purple again.

It's embarassing.  But that's what dressing in the dark tends to do.

Yesterday we had breakfast at Grandma Jo's.  And discussed where we were going to eat dinner.  That's what one does in this part of the country.  Today afternoon lunch is planned at Annie's in Scottsbluff, after getting the hair done, buying more books, and visiting the clinic.  The clinic for the purpley disposed.

Fooled, and not even April 1st

Courthouse and Jail Rock

Traveling from Alliance to Sidney yesterday afternoon, the sun struck the rock formations and lit them up.  This morning it is foggy in the hills, probably raining.  At my mother's house all the clocks are in a fog and display different times.  Kitchen clock, computer clock, clippy clock and coffee maker clock; none match.  Most often the discrepancy is a few minutes, not greater than an hour.

But when the DQ clock by the interchange this morning is so out of whack, I wonder who didn't reset the clock when the power went out and is the whole world in a fog?  Then I remember.  Spring Ahead, Duh.

Beautiful Day

Before dawn in a hot tub, watching the sun come over the hills,

it's easy to intend for a beautiful day, a day of delight and surprise.

We accomplished many exciting things today.  Scrubbed the spa, picked up sticks, swept the garage floor, prepared or planned three square meals (What's a square meal?), and brushed the horse.  Here is something I never thought I'd see, ever.

Here is Doc brushing Doc.

Here is Doc hiding from Doc.

And at the end of the day, the red-wing blackbirds signaled the end of winter.

Home on the Range

A walk beyond thunderdome brought me through two cattle guards...

Down the road to the disappearing point...

To the windmill at the base of the hills.  I stood among the cowpies and brittle grass, listening for the wind blowing down the slopes.  A train at the switch yard whistled an achingly melancholy tune.

The reward for a good walk is the ever-ready dispenser of jelly beans.